News

On April 4, 2024, our very own Clifford C. Chan was inducted by the Academy of Distinguished Alumni (ADA) at Berkeley CEE into its Class of 2023. This year’s banquet celebrated the 12th anniversary of the ADA’s founding and brought together alumni, faculty, students, and supporters from …

A UC Berkeley engineering research team, led by Professor Kenichi Soga, was recently granted $3 million by the California Energy Commission to enhance the seismic risk assessment of natural gas storage and pipeline infrastructure. Over a 3 year period, the team will employ a novel blend of remote an…

On March 13, 2024, the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) announced that our very own Professor Kenichi Soga will be delivering the 63rd Rankine Lecture in March 2025 at Imperial College London. The Rankine Lecture is renowned as one of the most prestigious invited lectures in the field of geote…

The plume of steam from UC Berkeley’s natural gas-fired power plant is a familiar sight on the skyline of San Francisco’s East Bay. But the facility’s days are numbered: The campus is on track to switch to an electrical heating system by 2028. As each UC campus prepares to publish …

In a recent milestone event, National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Smart and Connected Communities (SCC) Project team invited community members in Alameda County to the 2nd Alameda Community Meeting on January 12, 2024. The workshop, graciously hosted by the Head-Royce School in Oakland…

Seismic events, such as earthquakes, have the potential to induce ground movements that can adversely affect the structural integrity of gas well casings, thereby leading to the occurrence of gas leakage. An experimental investigation conducted in November 2023 aimed to explore the feasibility of em…

The Soga Research Group and collaborators have published a new paper in the journal Computers and Geotechnics: “Modeling large-deformation features of the Lower San Fernando Dam failure with the Material Point Method”, authored by Lauren Talbot, Joel Given, former SRG m…

The Soga Research group, together with collaborators from UCLA, published a paper in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction last December 2023 entitled “A granular framework for modeling the capacity loss and recovery of regional transportation networks under seismic hazards: a case st…

The Center for Smart Infrastructure (CSI) recently hosted a visit by State Assembly Members Buffy Wicks, Pilar Schiavo, and Juan Alanis. During the visit, CSI provided an overview of its ongoing initiatives related to water infrastructure, natural disasters, and wildfire evacuation, and discussed th…

Dayu Apoji was invited to talk at the Annual Congress of the Geotechnical Engineering Society Indonesia (HATTI), which was held in Jakarta on November 9, 2023. His presentation, titled “Applications of Machine Learning in Geo-Engineering, with an Emphasis on Tunneling Research,” focused …

Our group has recently published a paper titled “Shaping the Future of Tunneling with Data and Emerging Technologies,” authored by Dayu Apoji, Prof. Kenichi Soga, and Prof. Brian Sheil of The University of Cambridge, UK, in the Data-Centric Engineering Journal. This work envisions the po…

As part of their coursework for the CE170 Infrastructure Sensing and Modeling class, taught by Professor Kenichi Soga, students performed traffic simulations of wildfire evacuations from Berkeley Hills. Recently, the class had the privilege of welcoming Berkeley Fire Chief David Sprague and his coll…

On the vibrant day of October 17th, the Center for Smart Infrastructure (CSI) labwelcomed members from Pacific, Nor-Cal, and Western TAG utilities, as well asenthusiastic students from CE112 – Water & Wastewater Systems Design andOperation on October 19th. During these visits, we performed tensi…

The New Technology Project of the Year award was presented for the EBMUD Summit Pressure Zone South Pipeline Replacement, Phase 1 project (EBMUD – Claremont Ave Pipeline Monitoring – Oakland, California) by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), San Francisco section. This award r…

The members of the Smart and Connected Communities Project hosted the Marin Community Workshop at the College of Marin, Kentfield Campus on October 26, 2023. In this workshop, we shared updates on the simulations related to wildfires and evacuations, findings from interviews, and initial directions …

The 7th annual UC Berkeley Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium will be held on Friday, November 17, 2023, from 1-5 pm at the Banatao Auditorium in Sutardja Dai Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus. The symposium features the research conducted by current Ph.D. students and Research Assoc…

The Soga Research Group/Center for Smart Infrastructure, in partnership with Caltrans, is employing distributed fiber optic sensing and pore pressure transducers to monitor the geotechnical capacity of Cast-in-Steel-Shell (CISS) concrete piles in relation to soil plug thickness. This research seeks …

Students of CE 170A (Infrastructure Sensing and Modeling, taught by Professor Soga, Professor Kayen, and Professor Zekkos) had a lot of fun on September 6th. Model bridge tests were conducted as part of the Infrastructure Sensing module of the course, led by Connor and Shih-Hung. Three different bri…

The New Technology Project of the Year award was presented for the EBMUD Summit Pressure Zone South Pipeline Replacement, Phase 1 project (EBMUD – Claremont Ave Pipeline Monitoring – Oakland, California) by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), San Francisco section. This award recognizes …

The Soga Research Group secured funding from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to create a distributed monitoring system designed for steel pipelines transporting hydrocarbons through geohazard-prone areas. This innovative system has been implemented on a substantial…

Soga Research Group (SRG) collaborated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to host the second workshop of the GOES project at the Berkeley campus from September 25 to 27, 2023. Participating research teams from various countries presented updates on a range of topics, such as the full-…

In Framingham, MA, a pioneering “Networked Geothermal” project is underway to explore the potential of shallow geothermal for district heating and cooling, aiming to lower carbon emissions. During 2022 and 2023, SRG carried out four distributed thermal response tests to evaluate the geot…

During construction, continuous monitoring of underground tunnels can mitigate potential hazards and facilitate an in-depth understanding of the ground-tunnel interaction behavior. Traditional vision-based monitoring can directly capture an extensive range of motion but cannot separate the tunnel&#8…

Michael was a speaker at the 2023 PEER Annual Meeting held on August 24-25, 2023 at the Pauley Ballroom on the UC Berkeley campus. His presentation was entitled “Performance Based Economic Loss Assessment Due to a Hypothetical Large Southern California Earthquake Based on the Disruption and Re…

The Soga Research Group/Center for Smart Infrastructure is working with Caltrans to develop a cutting-edge distributed fiber optic sensing system for monitoring ground anchors. The primary goal is to quantify the distributed soil-grout-anchor interaction and load/stain transfer mechanism in various …

The UC Berkeley team participated in a full-scale field test of grout piles using Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS) to measure strain and temperature development throughout the project. The project involved the construction and load testing of 5 drilled grout columns for a Caltrans embankment c…

From August 22nd to August 24th, Jaewon (DAS lead) and Linqing (cruise leader) conducted data acquisition on a research vessel in Monterey Bay. The objective was to capture the ocean soundscape using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and, in particular, to record vocalizations from the whale specie…

The NSF-funded Smart and Connected Communities (SCC) Project team, led by Professor Kenichi Soga, CITRIS scholar Louise Comfort, and post-doc Seunghyun Lee, organized a pair of kickoff community workshops designed to promote collaboration and engagement. These workshops were held on February 15th at…

Jaewon presented her research “Hydraulic fracture stage identification and size estimation using distributed strain and temperature sensing” at The International Meeting for Applied Geoscience & Energy conference in Houston, Texas on August 30th, 2023. In this work, Jaewon worked wit…

Dayu attended the ASCE Geo-Risk conference at Arlington, VA, on July 23-26, 2023. He delivered a presentation titled “Unsupervised Soil Clustering and Anomaly Detection Based on EPB TBM Data”. In this work, he used a combination of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Local Outlier Fac…

To ensure the highest standards of safety and efficiency, we deploy Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot into the tunnel for inspection. SPOT is a quadruped terrestrial robot known for its agility and adaptability, and comes equipped with advanced sensors, transforming traditional tunnel inspection practices…

On May 21, Lake Temescal in Oakland hosted the vibrant centennial celebration of the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). The event, a tribute to EBMUD’s 100 years of service and dedication to the community, showcased the organization’s legacy. For a special presentation, EBMU…

Congratulations to CEE Professor Kenichi Soga on his induction into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE)! Soga was elected for his achievements in geomechanics and computational modeling, as well as underground infrastructure simulation and monitoring. He is one of 106 new members and…

Together with industry collaborators, we successfully held the UC Berkeley Tunneling Course titled “Principles, Practices, and Recent Development Using Data-Driven Methods” on February 7 at 454 Conference Room, Richmond Field Station. This initiative was aimed at developing the UC Berkeley tunneling…

The first preliminary assessment of the GPR-based mapping tool was conducted at two intersections on Van Buren Avenue, Oakland in December 2022 and January 2023 by CSI and GEO SEARCH. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a technology that can help to visualize underground objects without destructing th…

Two ductile iron pipes manufactured by U.S. Pipe were tested by the CSI group on November 30 and December 15 of 2022. The pipes were tested under bending forces to evaluate the rotation capacity of the bell of the pipe. A finite element model was built to simulate the behavior of the pipes under ben…

As a new activity by the Center for Smart Infrastructure (CSI), Professor Kenichi Soga, Won-jun Cha, Shih-Hung Chiu, and East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) subject-matter experts, led by Clifford Chan (General Manager) and David Katzev, opened a new undergraduate course for Fall 2022: Water…

Three iPVC pipes were tested in October and November, 2022 at the Center for Smart Infrastructure. The pipes were equipped with two types of restraints which were used to restrict the relative movement between the pipes. The pipe is designed to maintain water service after seismic hazards, and is kn…

On Wednesday, October 12th, delegates from Shell (Marwa Al-Ansary, Leonardo Spanu, and Andreas Matzakos) visited the Center for Smart Infrastructure. It was great to see Marwa, who was with Professor Soga during her PhD at Cambridge. Our visitors saw our large-scale testing facilities and interacted…

Students of CE 170A (Infrastructure Sensing and Modeling, taught by Professor Soga, Professor Kayen, and Professor Zekkos) had a lot of fun on September 14th. Model bridge tests were conducted as part of the Infrastructure Sensing module of the course, led by Jaewon and Shih-Hung. Three different br…

Two biaxial tension tests were conducted on August 31st and September 28th by the Center of Smart Infrastructure (CSI) group at Davis Hall. The TR-XTREME ductile iron pipes manufactured by U.S. Pipe, designed to maintain the full-service life after seismic events, were tested. The experiment aims to…

The Cornell Program in Infrastructure Policy (CPIP) at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction at Cambridge University (CSIC) will bring together top private and public sector leaders, academics, experts, and practitioners for a work…

The first ductile iron pipe test was performed in the Center for Smart Infrastructure on April 27, 2022. The pipe was manufactured by U.S. Pipe and was designed to maintain full service after seismic events. The special-designed joint of the pipe was tested under a tensile force. Distributed fiber o…

On Friday, April 1st, the SRG researchers, James, Shih-Hung, Tianyu, and Emily, and researchers from Berkeley CEE and CSI conducted and demonstrated the first saddle test in the Center of Smart Infrastructure, where 0.9-mm-diameter fiber optic cables and LUNA analyzer were used to monitor the behavi…

On Tuesday, April 19, Congressman Eric Swalwell of California’s 15th Congressional District visited the Center for Smart Infrastructure. Researchers of the Soga Research Group, colleagues from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, campus administrators, and industry partners prese…